THE MIRROR

Is this world as it appears?
Unsure, I asked my favorite mirror
Mirror, mirror, my old friend--tell me no, it’s not the end
Of music, dreams, and skies so blue
Of mother’s touch…and father’s too
The mirror stood silent as I cried
It showed my fear, I saw my lies
The eyes…..those eyes. Do I know those eyes?
That face I sort of recognize
Please tell me, mirror-who is he
Is he simply fantasy?
Does he have a heart, a soul?
Are his dreams impossible?
This strange man I now see
Is he you or is he me?
The mirror reflects on what I say
But not a word from it today
They say we’re only bits of sand
Nothing much to understand
Gazing at my favorite mirror
Things are not as they appear

THE REPTILIAN MALE

Why are men such poor communicators?....
because the fear of being annialated by other men?

Men perpetuate their ignorance in this fashion.

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We began as waunderers. We are waunderers still

We have lingered long enough on this shore of the cosmic ocean

It is time at last to set sail for the stars

Ha! The anti-capitaists

doing their thing at

the WTO. Nice work,

guys!!

......and the third little piggy finished his roof and squealed, "What a good pig am I"!!

An AL Tribune forum response

Sneak over to the Tribune poll on handguns, if you dare. You can almost hear the hundreds of chambers clicking shut, loaded and ready to shoot. These people live for guns, whether toys or weapons....or both.
Peace will never come as long as people are yet enamored with weapons of destruction....and killing. The enjoyable killing of animals by sportsmen is a way for them to vent primal instincts. To the killer a rational reason always exists. An upsurge of fear and mistrust does not help. Some societies do better than others, which is worth study. Others, lacking proper laws, quickly devolve into butchery.
Without laws forbidding murder, etc where would our society go?? We pride ourselves on our virtuousness, but it is the threat of harsh consequences that keep many humans 'virtuous'.


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DO HUMANS MATTER ?

There was a wonderful line I read in a book critique. It goes ".......humans desperately want to matter." This statement can lead down many avenues. Question: are humans relevant only to themselves? Is any universal entity relevant only to itself?

Many religions have a bizzare idea that only humans matter to God. Why is it not enough that humans matter to themselves? Is religion a transformation of natural physical law into 'unnatural' behavior? Do quarks matter to themselves(or God)? Do simple particles transform their self-relevance upon becoming complex entities? Are all existing particles, each, the center of the universe? Are these questions I now ask simply reconstruction of physical laws through brain processes? And why would physical laws take this route?

Another avenue is that humans do not matter, either in short term, or long. This idea would bother most humans if contemplated. But very few do. Being at the top of the food chain(where no other life forms {or e/m} depend on our survival) is not all it's cracked up to be. Human extinction would not threaten the Earth(or other natural species). They would all be glad we left......unless.....unless we, at sometime in the far future, are able to transplant life from this planet far away in a safe place. If the seeding of life throughout the galaxy(ies) is up to us.....well, we better get our butts in gear. This preservation of life, whether our own or other species, is a way for humans to matter.

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Hmmmm........many blogs are simply online journals. Like mine.

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A Dream
……..we are discussing, we are in a very deep conversation. As we exchange ideas our bodies begin disintegrating and vanish altogether. Our words, ideas, bodies swirl and blend in a mist in some unknown space. Unfamiliar abstract forms take shape, then change as ideas and “we” link to one another. Forces take on bizarre non-forms. Yet it is all extremely clear and well defined, orderly and simple. No chaos. No absurdities or fear. Very intellectual equations and words….our bodies take on geometric shapes that change hues…..
…..now I find myself in bodily form once more gazing upon a row of heavy cast iron mechanisms. The metal machines look very heavy and measure several feet across, and they vary in shape and purpose. I gaze at the row of contraptions. My mind is calm. I feel a sense of sadness and melancholy for the world, my body, my life. But now there is something I know.
“The Evaporator”, I say to the vendor selling the machines. “I want the Evaporator”.
Now I expand and disintegrate. I become minute particles, millions upon millions, floating in the air, slowly drifting up and away like smoke in a sunlit room. I am leaving, going to some new place.
The others whom I had conversed earlier now came running with “nets” try to catch the tiny particles (me) so I couldn’t leave them……..

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Relaxation on the Temple steps

All work and no play is not good

_______________________ Some say we are in a recession. Others say it could be a depression. But, maybe it is something far deeper than either of these. What we are seeing could be a basic structural transformation of the capitalist system--the beginning of a new "post-market" phase.
Early capitalism was market-based, growing by capital accumulation from inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrialization. The 19th century economist Adam Smith wrote about how the "invisible hand" of market forces could guide the economy. Later, economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote about how "creative destruction" and market discipline could flush out inefficient industries and renew the market capitalism. Economist John Maynard Keynes wrote about how government could help stabilize capitalism and markets by taxation and spending--smoothing out the bumps. Banking and finance were ancillary, serving to augment and facilitate industrial capitalism. Finance was, in a sense, a utility--not an industry in itself. It did not produce any wealth, but only facilitated the flow of capital to where it was needed. This system produced a lot of economic growth and wealth over the years.
Today we may be experiencing something quite different -- a transformation from market-based capitalism to feudal-based capitalism. As manufacturing, engineering, and research have been shifted abroad, the role of banking and finance in the economy has expanded (as tends to happen in declining empires). Executive compensation, particularly in financial "industries," has grown beyond all reasonable proportion. Graduating college students have been seeking careers in finance rather than in engineering or science and medicine because that's where the money is. The result was a compensation system that established a perverse incentive to "privatize the gains and socialize the losses."
Now, as we find ourselves in a financial crisis, we are told that we must not let the traditional market forces work (e.g., Schumpeter's "creative destruction" ) because the financial institutions (i.e., Citigroup, GM, AIG, etc.) are now "too big to fail" and must be preserved, whatever the cost. Members of Congress may complain and posture, but at the end of the day they must preserve those who paid for their campaigns and keep them in office. We are told that the financial/banking system is so complicated that only those (from the elite finance culture) who ran it off the rails it can now "fix" it (e.g., Ben Bernanke, etc.).
In the new feudal phase of capitalism, the resources of society are allocated not by markets but by and elite class of feudal lords. Rather than land-lords, they are now money-lords. Beginning with the Reagan-Thatcher "free market" era, and since, a principle theme was privatization and deregulation -- with a transfer of traditionally governmental functions to private institutions. In the new feudal phase of late capitalism, the government itself becomes privatized. The government and the taxpayers (i.e., serfs) that support it become an adjunct to the feudal institutions at the top of the "food chain." It is said that the government is buying the banks, but rather perhaps it is the banks that are buying the government (note whom the prevailing lords are at the end of the day). The currently popular term is "zombie" bank -- but "feudal" may be more appropriate because feudal estates can be productive, at least for their elites.
A characteristic of the feudal system is stability, rather than growth. A modern example of this may be Japan in recent decades. Japan has a long cultural history of feudalism, and its industrial and political structure mirrors this. As Japan's banks and (quasi-feudal) financial institutions could not rid themselves of non-performing assets (perhaps partly for cultural reasons), the Japanese economy languished for over a decade, along with technical innovation and industrial growth.
It is hard to imagine a feudal system in the context of traditional American entrepreneurial culture, but it is also hard to imagine how the present domination of American political life by mega-corporations, corporate media, K Street, and particularly by the elite financial institutions, can change. I don't doubt that Barack Obama has only the best intentions, but the situation may be beyond anyone's control. If so, welcome to the new feudal estate.

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My point is that the face of corruption and lies and injustice is different in this country, due to our constitution, our traditions,....and most of all our laws. It is the laws that transform outright corruption into a hidden world of deceit which most of us are unaware. The Wallstreet scandal is a tip of this underworld of injustice that affects each of us every day. The hated "liberal big-nosed media" is in fact part of this hidden world. They attempt to persuade people, as I, to believe they are capable of exposing any and all bad characters in our system; when, in fact, they are part of this malicious game to quell the fears and suspicions of any who may question the nature and motives of those in power. Motives is the key. Many trust the proclaimed motives of our leaders and citizens. I am quite skeptical of the 'proclaimed motives' we are bombarded with daily. Humans, in general, are much more selfish than they proclaim. It is a natural way of life. But since in this country selfishness is proclaimed a vice, people of import(and commoners) must hide their true selfish desires in order to be acceptable. But the natural selfishness never goes away..... in most of us.
In second and third world countries this game of deception is not needed. They simply admit their motives(evil may they be) and enforce them by brute force. But the motives are much the same as ours in this country. A thin veneer of deception and laws(and public ignorance) projects America as a beacon on a hill, when in truth many in our country are as evil and insidious as the ranting tyrants of the world. America wears a mask, adopted as the Walmart logo. The only one it fools is itself.

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Aha ! I found my own blog. Now I am rolling!

My first blog

This is my first attempt. I am not sure if I will ever find this blog myself. Let us see what happens.